The Dark Knight Rises: new info, interviews, and photos from Empire

The long awaited July 2012 issue of Empire magazine hit newsstands today, and it’s packed with lots of new info, interviews, and photos from The Dark Knight Rises. I just finished reading the article and wanted to share some interesting bits of news with you.

In Fall of 2008, Christopher Nolan and co-writer David Goyer came up with the ending to The Dark Knight Rises. They didn’t know what the plot would be, or which villains would terrorize Gotham, but they knew it would be the final Batman movie in their trilogy, and they knew how they wanted it to end. Goyer explained that the ending in The Dark Knight Rises is exactly what they talked about 4 years ago — it’s completely unchanged. When Goyer saw that final scene from The Dark Knight Rises, he got a lump in his throat.

More than a third of the film, 1 hour, was shot in IMAX.

The Dark Knight Rises is Wally Pfister’s last movie as Director of Photography, he’ll be moving on to pursue a directing career.

As I mentioned earlier this week, Nolan confirmed that The Joker will not be addressed at all in The Dark Knight Rises. He was also nervous about adding Catwoman, but his brother Jonah convinced him that she needed to be part of the trilogy.

David Goyer said that at the premiere of The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. executives were already talking about a villain for The Dark Knight Rises — “it’s gonna be The Riddler, and we want it to be Leonardo DiCaprio…”.

Christopher Nolan confirmed that Anne Hathaway’s character, Selina Kyle, is never referred to as “Catwoman” in the script.

There’s also some new photos in the magazine, as well as some that we’ve seen before. Be sure to pick up the July 2012 issue of Empire for the full interviews and even more photos. The only decision you’ll have to make is which cover you’ll buy… Batman or Catwoman? To quote Robin from Batman Forever — why not both? Yeah. That just happened.